Gail Wynand grew up on the streets of Hell's Kitchen in New York. He becomes a newspaper man and by the age of 36 controls an empire of newspapers and other media outlets. His paper, theBanner, appeals to the lowest common denominator, and it makes no attempt to do anything beyond satisfying the desires of the mob. Gail Wynand's ultimate goal is to acquire power over as many people as he can, but he does not realize that his power only exists while he is telling the people what they want to hear.
Wynand is the great tragic hero of The Fountainhead. He was a brilliant youth whose innovative ideas were always greeted with derision by the short-sighted men he worked for. Consequently, he came to believe that the only chance for pioneering thinkers was to gain power over the corrupt fools who, in his view, ruled human society. The result was the profoundly sad spectacle of Wynand’s brilliantly original mind used for the degraded purpose of acquiring power over others.